> There is a sub-tribe within C++ that wants a simpler "subset of the superset". They believe C++ could be made into a healthy modern language which is practical to teach as a first language to students and still has excellent performance and hardware compatibility.

Yes. There is a "c++" which is simple, consistent, and fairly easy to use, but it's buried in the cruft of decades.

The biggest complaint about Rust's "hardness" is ownership and move/borrow mechanics. Modern C++ has std::move, ownership, and lifetime considerations.

Add to that smart pointers, initialization, a bloatastic std lib, an even more bloatastic pseudo-std lib that you need if you have to interop with anything older than 14 (boost), umpteen different build systems, compilers, toolchains, and all that on top of almost-not-quite-C-superset, and you have a massive surface area.

On another HN thread, someone commented that developers took 3x longer to get to speed in a Rust codebase than C++. I say no way, Jose. I was committing PRs in Rust within a few months. I still don't feel comfortable in C++ of any serious complexity. That's with 2 years of C experience, 1 yr of intensive C++, and like, a few months of rust.